Matin Durrani reviews Third Thoughts by Steven Weinberg
I once interviewed the Nobel-prize-winning theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg, and found him to be a friendly and engaging person who thought deeply about fundamental physics. I’m not sure he enjoys working with other people though. After I wrote up the interview for Physics World, I e-mailed it to Weinberg to check, but he took issue with various parts of the text and refused to spend time straightening it out or answering follow-up questions – we never did end up publishing that piece. I suppose I should have foreseen his reaction; after all, Weinberg had told me he “almost never” collaborates or co-authors research papers because “I don’t like how other people write”.
Thankfully, Weinberg is a prolific author himself, so to know more about what he thinks, take a look at Third Thoughts, his third collection of essays and talks (click here for reviews of the second and first), most of which originally appeared in the New York Review of Books. It covers not only his specialisms of particle physics and cosmology, but also the history of science, politics and funding (he doesn’t like manned spaceflight), and what he dubs “personal matters”. The latter, however, won’t give you much of an insight into what makes Weinberg tick; the closest he gets to a personal revelation is to admit that it’s “profoundly instructive to learn that one has been wrong about something” (though I guess that happens rarely for him).
A trip through Weinberg’s world
Where the book excels is the science and Third Thoughts has some marvellously pithy accounts of topics including the Standard Model, symmetries in physics, and dark matter and dark energy. Weinberg is an expert guide and these wise, informative and delightfully written essays are all brief and to the point. “What is an elementary particle?” is particularly strong. I also loved his remarks after receiving an honorary doctorate from Rockefeller University in the US, where Weinberg took issue with those who doubt the consensus on climate change. “It is ,” warned Weinberg, “generally foolish to bet against the judgements of science, and in this case, where the planet is at stake, it is insane.”
- 2018 Harvard University Press 226pp £20.00/$25.95pb
